Sardis and the Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe

Sardis lay at the foot of Mount Tmolus in western Türkiye and was settled before 1500 BC. In the 7th century BC it became the capital of Lydia, whose kings, Croesus among them, ruled as far east as the Halys River. According to UNESCO the Lydians founded the first empire in the region during the Iron Age, protected their capital with a wall 20 m thick and shaped its slopes into monumental terraces.

The Lydian elite raised great burial mounds at Bin Tepe, 7 to 17 km north of the citadel. The earliest date from around 600 BC, and the largest of more than 100 tumuli is generally accepted as the tomb of King Alyattes, who died in 560 BC. It is 63 m high and 330 m across at the base, and Herodotus judged it the most notable work in Lydia, surpassed only by those of Egypt and Babylon.

In the mid-6th century BC the Persian king Cyrus the Great defeated Croesus and sacked Sardis after a brief siege, and excavators have found the burned fortifications and traces of street fighting. The city became the seat of a Persian satrapy and the western end of the Royal Road from Persepolis. It surrendered to Alexander the Great without a fight in 334 BC, and was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2025.